Participants: 28-34-month-olds

Research Question:

When adults hear an unfamiliar word, they can often understand what it refers to based on contextual information. For example, if an adult heard Please hand me the cloth on the deebo when seeing a cloth on an unfamiliar object, they would infer that deebo was the name of the unfamiliar object using cues from the context. The goal of this study was to explore whether 2-year-old children are also able to figure out the meanings of unfamiliar words using  their prior word knowledge and cues from the visual scene.

Research Procedure:

Using our looking-while-listening procedure, we tested children’s ability to learn the meanings of unfamiliar words that were mentioned incidentally. To better understand under what conditions 2-year-olds are able to learn words using contextual cues, we conducted a series of studies using increasingly more challenging learning contexts. For example, in a teaching phase 28- to 34-month-olds saw familiar objects positioned on or by two unfamiliar structures, while hearing sentences with an unfamiliar word such as, "Look at  the KITTY on the deebo" or sentences without the unfamiliar word "Look at the SHOE over there." Since the unfamiliar object was never labeled directly as a deebo and attention was directed to the familiar object, we wondered whether 2-year-olds could make the connection between the unfamiliar word in the sentence and the unfamiliar object in the picture. Children were then tested on their recognition of the new word by presenting both novel objects against each other without any contextual cues, asking "Where’s the DEEBO?" The looking-while-listening procedure allowed us to tell at what point in time children were able to orient to the correct picture when hearing "Look at the KITTY on the deebo," and also whether they succeeded in  mapping the new word to the novel object afterwards on their own.

Findings and Implications:

Just as adults can learn the meanings of new words without direct instruction, the children in our studies were also successful in learning a new word indirectly. That is, they were able to figure out without direct labeling that the unfamiliar word in the sentences they heard referred to the unfamiliar object in the pictures they saw. Children even succeeded in this task when they saw two pictures simultaneously in the teaching phase, i.e. a shoe on an unfamiliar object and a baby on another unfamiliar object while hearing Look at the BABY  on the deebo. In fact, they disambiguated the visual scene rapidly using their prior knowledge of familiar words efficiently enough so that they already orienting to the correct picture before the unfamiliar word was even spoken. This study extends what we know about how children can learn new words in the 2nd and 3rd year of life as vocabulary learning takes off in leaps and bounds. Our findings show how efficiently 2-year-olds can integrate what they already know to help them learn something new.

Presented at the Biennial Meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development 2003 (abstract) and 2005 (abstract)

Our thanks to all the parents and children who participated in this study! You have made a valuable contribution to the scientific understanding of early language learning, and we very much appreciate your generosity.